Hello Old Friend, We Meet Again!

Today I got to hear my second favorite sound in the whole wide world. (Well, I got to hear my first favorite sound, Amanda's laugh, as well, but that's another blog post in itself.) My second favorite sound is the crunch of fallen leaves under my shoes and I intentionally made it about 20 times today! I capital L-O-V-E this time of year! I'm not exactly sure when it started, but for as long as I can remember I find myself looking forward to the fall as soon as spring starts rearing it's warm, rainy, pastel-colored head. It's deep in my bones and it gets stronger with every passing year. 

Maybe it's because fall is when college football starts and I have so many great memories of watching games with my dad, even before I knew what was going on. He cheered, I cheered. He agreed with the coach, I agreed with the coach. He booed the refs, I booed the refs. I became a Miami Hurricanes fan because they won the championship the year I started watching football. Over the years my dad became a Miami fan as well and I don't think it was because they were anything great to him. I think it was because he liked sharing them with me. And when the games were over, we'd go for walks and talk about everything and nothing with the sound of crunching leaves trying to join our conversation.        

Or maybe it's because fall is when we start preparing for the holidays and my all-year-long listening of Christmas music can finally be excused for a month or two. See, I'm what you call a "Christmas Freak" and there's just something to be said for any holiday that can make you cut down living vegetation from the outside world and bring it into your living room to be covered with ornaments and lights. And we can't forget Thanksgiving! The time of year when you can eat your weight in those little Hawaiian sweet rolls and mashed potatoes without feeling the the judgmental eyes of the folks in the buffet line at Golden Corral bearing down on you. It's enough to make you not mind running to the store for more ingredients the night before the big Thanksgiving dinner, just so you can hear the holiday song made by the clinking cans of chicken stock, the rustling bag of potatoes and the crunching of the leaves under your feet. 

Or maybe it's because everything looks so much cooler in the fall. The colors made by the leaves turning such amazing shades of orange, red, yellow and brown give such a nice ambiance to everything. The beauty and vulnerability of dark brown trees that no longer have any leaves to hide behind. The way the sky can turn such a cool color of grey without raining. When the Bible talks about the earth proclaiming God's glory, these are the images that come to my mind. I think when God created the earth, fall was the inaugural season. And as Adam and Eve walked hand in hand, God said "this is good" just loud enough to be heard over the leaves crunching beneath their feet.

But maybe, just maybe, the strongest reason I get excited about fall is because that is when Amanda and I started dating. Let me take you back to the fall of 1997. Trying to cover my intentions beneath the ruse of setting up two friends, I asked Amanda to go on a double date as part of a "match-making friends team". Well, those two backed out, taking my elaborate cover-up with them. But my heart could not let this opportunity pass by, so I decided to just ask her. She coyly smiled, said "sure" and the date was set. Saturday November 1st, 1997, me and my fellow Fayette Christian Falcons football team were playing for the state championship. Everyone was so pumped, but I could not wait for the game to be over. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say that the opposing team scored the only touchdown of the game with 3 seconds left. My teammates walked off the field, heads hung low, muttering something about it being the worst day of their lives. I didn't exactly catch what they were saying because I was speeding by them, looking for the best day of my life to start. There she was, in a black and white Old Navy sweatshirt, talking to some friends. I snuck up behind her, touched her gently on the back and said "hey". She turned around and hugged my sweaty, dirty, tired self and my world was never the same. We had to have our first date at her house since she was on restriction and couldn't go out. Luckily her parents still let me come over and our date consisted of rewinding a VHS of Toy Story and talking for hours. When it was time for me to go, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go in for the kiss. No words, just fireworks and colors I'd never seen before. Life-changing magic, period. And I'll never forget the sound of the crunching leaves covering our contented silence as she walked back to the house and I walked to my VW Bug, never taking our eyes off each other.    

So it may make me sound like a hippie to be in love with a season, but fall has been the backdrop for so many great things in my life and the crunching leaves have provided a soundtrack for so many amazing times. And as I completely revel in this current fall and look forward to many more in the future, I can't help but think of all of the awesome memories that I have yet to experience. I've been blessed with a wife that loves the fall as well and doesn't mind just stopping to look at the beautiful gray sky or driving somewhere to see the leaves change. And as we walk through this crazy world hand in hand, I continue to have the thought that the only thing better than the sound of leaves crunching underneath my feet, is the sound of the leaves crunching underneath our feet. 

Additional Thoughts...

After reading my previous blog post, I’m not sure my thoughts were entirely clear. Being OCD about this type of thing, I felt that a little addendum might be in order. But where could I turn for assistance? Who could help me out with such a daunting task? Who else but Merle Haggard, of course! As a wee lad my father instilled in me many things, one of which would be the love of solid gold country hits from the glory days of AM radio. By dissecting the lyrics of one such gem, I believe I may be able to unpack my thoughts a little better regarding the idea of being truly “for” something instead of just being “against” the opposite of that something. 

In 1969, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Merle Haggard wrote “Okie From Muskogee”. The song was intended to be a satirical rallying cry for small town, conservative mindsets in the heyday of dirty hippies, free love and recreational drug use. However, my admittedly over-analytical look at the lyrics reveals that the pride he sings of is more about what an Okie is not, more so than what an Okie actually is. 

Let’s look at the first and second verse:

We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee

We don’t take no trips on LSD

We don’t burn our drafts cards down on Main Street

We like livin’ right and bein’ free

We don’t make a party out of lovin’

We like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo

We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy

Like the hippies out in San Francisco do

Although I am not exactly sure how one would “pitch woo”, I’m going to count that as an Okie qualifier. Simple math reveals that the “nots” have it 6 lines to 2. Maybe we’ll get some Okie clarifications in the third verse: 

Leather boots are still in style for manly footwear

Beads and Roman Sandals won’t be seen

Football’s still the roughest thing on campus

And the kids there still respect the college dean

Although it looks like we get 3 lines describing what an Okie is all about, you will see that the word “still” is in each line. This one word carries a lot of weight by implying that Okies have continued an action that the non-Okies have moved away from, therefore again making a stand on just being the opposite of something. This makes the overall score 10 lines to 2 in favor of the “nots”. So really, the song’s not about being proud of his “Okieness” as much about being proud of not being a non-Okie. Thoroughly confused? Don’t worry, the train is rounding the bend and heading into the station.

Turn on CNN, Fox News, Larry King Live or any other current events programming and the “Christian perspective” of any topic will be represented by a talking head explaining how we Christians are against abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage and democrats.  Although no one from any of these television programs have invited me on for my opinion on the matter, I do have an influence on how my friends, family and co-workers feel about Christians. Do they see me as someone who happily stands for Christ-centered values and perspectives because of how much I love God and want to live my life in an appreciative response to Him for everything He has done for me? Or do they see someone who associates himself with one group by simply disassociating himself from another group? Which one is more appealing and attractive to a world that may not know it is in need of a Savior? Which one reminds me that I am continually in that same state of need? 

I May Never March In The Infantry...

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” – G.K. Chesterton 

Growing up in the church, I was taught at a young age that the Christian life is a life wrapped in battle. Songs like “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “I’m In The Lord’s Army” used war imagery to help my young mind understand the eternal struggle of good vs. evil and help me decide whose camp I was going to be in. The idea was, God and the devil did not get along and you needed to pick a side before the everlasting throwdown commenced. Being a 6-year old obsessed with G.I. Joes and Rambo movies, this made sense to me. The decision was made even easier since I had the Bible to tell me how it all ended. When the dust finally settles, God wins. If that wasn’t enough, all I had to do was just look at the combatants names. God was just one letter away from good and the devil was just one letter away from evil. How much easier could the decision be? Sign me up for the good guys!

As my biblical boot camp continued, I learned how bad the devil was and how he used sin to wreck the world. He had quite the arsenal of destruction and wasn’t afraid to use it. If something was bad, it came from the devil. If something was going wrong in my life, it was his fault. Any sin I saw in myself or others was a direct attack from his side of the battlefield. Even at a young age, this can skew how you see the world and everyone in it. All the “bad stuff” in the world and everyone participating in “bad stuff” was associated with who I was fighting against. So all I had to do was find out what was “bad” and do the opposite. If THAT was bad, and I didn’t look, act, or talk like THAT, then by default, I was good. Faulty reasoning for sure.

As a follower of Christ, knowing what I am “against” is the easy part. That easiness can quickly lead to a stagnant life of judgmental legalism and finger-pointing. In fact, I think when the world looks at us “Christians” as a whole, they probably see a group of unloving soldiers brandishing our disapproving fingers as our weapon of choice. If this is the case, we have severely misrepresented our Captain and the mission He entrusted to us. But what if we, in our own individual circles of influence, decided to live in a way that would change that mindset? What if we were “for” more things than we were “against”? What if our fight, which is not against flesh and blood anyway (Ephesians 6:12), was more of a rescue mission than a be-right-at-all-cost crusade? What if our actions caused someone to accuse us of being "Christ-like" before we had the chance to tell them we were a  "Christian." How encouraging to think that God has given us the ability to live in a way that what we SHOULD be known for could actually be what we ARE known for. G.I. Joe cartoons always ended with the reminder that "knowing" is half the battle. In this case, I have a hunch that "loving" is the other, more important half.     

Let There Be Blog...

Greetings to everyone who is reading this. I appreciate both of you very much! I must admit, I've always had a slightly prejudiced opinion against bloggers. After reading too many blogs that contained a minute-by-minute account of someone's random day or how they had some quasi-spiritual experience over a bowl of frosted flakes, I may have become a little jaded. Narcissism run rampant , I thought. What makes any individual think that the collective world would be concerned with a rundown of what you are wearing, doing, eating, enjoying and thinking on any given Tuesday? But then I remembered that I had never read a blog against my will. Each time I wade through the great sea of cyberspace to find blogs by friends, acquaintances or people I "know", I willing subject myself to any fickle thoughts or actions they find interesting enough to throw out there. If I continue reading their offerings, then on some level I must be interested in what they have to say. After stumbling across this epiphany, and also having a friends blog help me survive 5 or 6 hours of boredom in an ER waiting room, I've decided to throw my hat in the ring. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em right? So I've enlisted myself into the blogger ranks; holding my keyboard aloft and marching to the tune of my own meanderings. Let's just see where this little road leads...